Kovai rural areas at risk as people start commuting to highly infected areas in Corporation limits

“Even among the rural areas, only those areas like Thondamuthur, Perur and Chettipalayam abutting the city limits are recording more infections,” said G Ramesh Kumar, Deputy Director of Public Health Department, Coimbatore district.

Undoubtedly, the urban areas continue to add up to the steep surge in COVID-19 tally as the positivity rate in rural areas remains at 3 to 5 per cent whereas it is 9 to 10 per cent in the city limits.

Almost 85 per cent of the cases are in the city areas and particularly in the heavily congested South zone, Central zone and West zone of the Corporation. Experts say that it may take at least couple of weeks for Coimbatore to witness a drop in COVID-19 infection rate and that too isn’t possible unless people co-operate.

Of the total, 16,662 cases, the district has recorded so far, 10,669 cases were in August alone, which is more than double from 4,000 and odd cases in July. Continuing with its trend, on Wednesday too, Coimbatore reported 579, the highest in numbers next only to Chennai. “However, the doubling time has increased from 9 to 11 days in July to 20 to 23 days in August. Yet our main concern now is to reduce the mortality rate, which has risen from 1 to 1.9 per cent,” the official added.

For that the Health Department has resorted to aggressive testing. From 3,000 to 3,500 samples done before, the health authorities have increased it to 6,000 to 6,500 samples over the last 10 days.

“We are planning to further increase the number of samples particularly in Corporation limits for early detection, isolation and treatment. Also, the 10 private labs have been requested to inform the results of COVID-19 tests within 24 hours,” said Ramesh Kumar.

Meanwhile, in a worrying trend more numbers of COVID-19 positive persons were found to be exhibiting aggravated symptoms than before. “Earlier, the infected persons had only mild symptoms, whereas now a majority is showing moderate to severe symptoms, possibly due to virus mutation,” said A Nirmala, Dean of Government Medical College and ESI Hospital.